Summer Mushroom Foraging | Practical Self Reliance
Chanterelles, Lobsters and more, oh my!
Mushroom foraging is often associated with the warming temperatures in early spring, or short days and cooling nights in early autumn…but there are plenty of summer mushrooms that don’t mind the heat.
You can often find these heat loving mushrooms a day or two after heavy summer thunderstorms, and many will fruit all summer long and keep going in fall.
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This time of year, keep an eye out for:
I know, finding a spot to forage mushrooms can be hard if you’re in the suburbs or the city. If you’re hoping to taste some of these wild flavors but just can’t find them, many of them are available directly from local foragers on Foraged Market (use the cupon code FORAGED10 for 10% off orders of $50 or more.)
If you’re new to mushroom foraging, I’d suggest starting with my guide to 13+ Wild Mushrooms for Beginners. For those of you on the other side of the globe, here are 16+ Mushrooms to Forage in Winter.
Things You Might Need This Week
16+ Weeds with Purple Flowers - Many of the most common lawn weeds are small, low growing weeds with purple flowers…and most of them are both edible and medicinal. I wrote this guide to help you identify and use some of the most common lawn weeds.
How to Rot a Tree Stump Fast - We’ve had a lot of trees come down in storms lately, leaving stumps all over the yard. Stump grinders are expensive, but there are a few natural ways to rot a tree stump fast so you’re not tripping over it until the end of time.
30+ Ways to Use Lemon Balm - This time of year, lemon balm takes over our herb garden beds and we harvest huge amounts of it for cooking, winemaking and herbal remedies.
Seasonal Preserving
Recipes to keep your larder full all year round…in season now:
Things I’m Loving
Pleasant Hill Grain ~ They sell just about everything you need to put up food on your homestead, and they only carry the highest quality equipment. We’ve bought dozens of pieces of equipment there, including our All-American Pressure Canner, hand crank grain mill, cheese press, cider press, and so much more.
Berkey Water Filter ~ In terms of water preparedness, there’s no better option than a Berkey Water Filter. I take you through all the options, big and small, in my article on emergency water preparedness…but spoiler alert, there’s nothing that really compares to a Berkey.
Slavic Kitchen Alchemy by Zuza Zak ~ With a mix of traditional remedies and recipes, along with a heaping dose of folklore, this book is right up my alley. I literally opened it for the first time to a page containing traditional acorn flour recipes, then flipped passed dozens of traditional herbal remedies I love and cherish, plus dozens I’d never heard of (but will be adding to my apothecary shortly). The book comes out in October, but the author was kind enough to send me an advance copy and I absolutely love it. (I do get sent a lot of advance copies, and I don’t share many of them…but this one is amazing.)
What are you harvesting, preserving, building, or exploring on your homestead this week? I’d love to hear about it!
Leave me a note in the comments…
(Comments only, please. Emails tend to get lost in my inbox, and as much as I’d love to get back to each and every one, my screen time is very limited…and things fall through the cracks, and emails get buried in my inbox. If you comment here, they’re all in one place, and it’s much easier to get back to every single one.)
Until Next Time,
Ashley at Practical Self Reliance
This week is pain relief week. Opium lettuce, stinging nettle and also comfrey for healing 🙂
I'm such a newbie forager that I don't trust myself with mushrooms yet...but this week I discovered milkweed! We've made some flower syrup from blossoms and we steamed some buds to include in a oriental-style stir fry with sauteed yucca flowers and magnolia bud "pickled ginger". Delicious!